Fair Isle Knitting – Yarn, Books & Roses

Houston, We have a Koivua…

It’s here, it’s here, it’s here! I have been listening to some amazing science fiction books and knitting away thinking about space and different forms of learning and intelligence. This is a sweater that will be forever linked with evolution, creativity, space ships, and human struggle, hence the title of this post. I am please to announce the arrival of my Koivua, a sweater that has been an adventure from start to finish. Yep, this has been a journey, but I feel that I really learned a lot along the way. Before I go into all of the detail of this ~~mis~~adventure I guess I’d better show off the final product. Ta-daa… and here’s….Koivua!!

Hot off the knitting needles, here is my finished Koivua.

I fussed and worried a lot about the yarns that I used for this sweater, and finally bought some lovely DK weight natural yarn (Scout by Kelbourne Woolens) to go with my beautiful DK weight superwash yarn from Stitch Together Studio.

The Scout yarn is not superwash and the rose colored yarn is. NOT a problem, right? Houston, we have a PROBLEM!!

After looking at the two yarns carefully I decided to knit with the cream yarn in my right hand and the rose superwash yarn in my left. I loved the rose and wanted it to show well in the sweater. Since the cream was fluffier I was pretty sure I would get a balanced fabric after blocking the Fair Isle knitted colorwork.

Not that balanced after all. The cream yarn is just getting eaten alive by the rose that seems to be much bulkier after blocking. Maybe it can’t compete with the superwash, but it didn’t emerge the way I expected it to after blocking. Crap!! I should have done a swatch trying out both versions of handling the yarn. I love the vein details in the leaves, but you’d never know they were there with this pathetic showing of the cream yarn.

Now that the sweater is done I am very sad that I didn’t knit it with the white in my left hand, but such is life. I wanted the rose to be dominant, and it is doing that, so I should focus on that. Lesson learned. Let’s move on to the bottom of the sweater where I had more of a success.

Isn’t this corrugated ribbing the best?!

I added a repeat of the textured block at the bottom of the sweater to get some more length and discovered that it really wanted to blouse out. The ribbing at the top of the sweater drew in quite a bit, so I decided to add corrugated ribbing to balance the colors in the sweater and to keep the drape of the sweater open. This was a huge win!! Since I knew that an I-cord bind off was going to be used on the sleeves I just went ahead and added one here to put more weight at the hem. Cool. This kind of makes up for the wimpy veins on the leaves. On to the sleeves!

The original design as charted by the author (Caitlin Hunter) created belled sleeves by increasing the stitch count at the end of the first colorwork section and again at the top of the second colorwork section. I counted stitches, did some math, decreased 2 stitches after finishing the first colorwork block, redistributed my stitch markers and I now had decreased the sleeve from 12 repeats of the pattern to 10 repeats. Yay! By the end of the sleeve I had chopped 16 stitches out of the stitch count, which is still kind of full, but not as belled as originally written. I had to make some adjustments as I did the decreases at the bottom of the sleeve, but managed to get the stitches back to the correct number before the final I-cord bind off. Pretty good, huh!

Once I had the sweater all blocked and finished I decided that I wanted some color right at the top of the neck to balance everything and to give it that last little shot of the rose yarn that I loved so much. Yep. I picked up stitches around the neck and added an I-cord bind off to complete the look.

The I-cord actually helped put the ribbing at the neck down around my shoulders as it wanted to try to do a little turtleneck action. The I-cord put a stop to that and gave me the color balance that I wanted in the sweater. It is also stretchy enough to allow the sweater to be easily pulled over my head. Win!

The only thing that I have failed to mention is the heart-stopping worry that I had that perhaps the rose yarn might run a little when I blocked the sweater. I had already made a sweater from this yarn and didn’t remember any problems, but still, I worried.

I did make a swatch to test this. No problems!! Notice that the cream seems slightly larger than the rose yarn. Why is my Fair Isle misbehaving? So unexpected and unfair. Okay, I’m moving on now….

I should mention that it is not a good plan to drink red colored vitamin water while knitting a white sweater. Sometimes, I am stupid. There is a tiny amount of additional pink in places where it shouldn’t be, but I’m not going to show that off, and you really don’t need to see it. Just remember this little gem of good advice and don’t be stupid like me…

So that’s it. My Koivua is done, it makes me happy to look at it and I can’t wait for colder weather to arrive so I can show it off. Yay. Meanwhile I am battling MacKenzie for control of the sweater and dreaming of a new project to cast on. I think that it is time for dark blue yarn, don’t you?

Because bossy cats need their knitting to sleep on.

If you would like to see my Ravelry notes on this project after all of this you can find them here. If you are wondering about the books that I’ve been reading/listening to they are the two book set by Adrian Tchaikovsky called Children of Time and Children of Ruin. I’m trying to think of how to write about these two books…

MacKenzie Speaks: Nordiska Days

Hi. I’m MacKenzie.

Do you see this knitting? The Mother of Cats and I are working like crazy on her Nordiska sweater.

She got cranky at the beginning of the sweater when she decided that she didn’t like the look of the cables that are on the edges of the raglan sleeve increases. She kept checking the pattern, knitting, grumbling, eating cookies and fussing about the look of the cable. Not always stable, the Mother of Cats…

See how the cable edge isn’t clean on the right side? The Mother of Cats went crazy about this.

I think that she should have just gotten past this little design flaw and gotten me more cookies, but NO! She had to rip everything out and started again with her own idea of how to make the cable.

Here is her revised version of the cable. Glad that crisis was over as she really neglected me something awful while she was deciding whether to rip/not rip. Once she ripped out the sweater and started over (MAJOR CAT FUN!!) she was back to normal and paid much more attention to me. About time, Mother of Cats! She is just exhausting some days.

I settled down for a little nap while she worked her way through the boring upper body of the sweater…

Grabbed some more nap time while she got herself organized for doing the colorwork at the bottom of the sweater…

And really poured on the attention and support while she was knitting with different colors of yarn.

What can I say? I really like knitting that has more than one ball of yarn involved. The Mother of Cats keeps flipping the different colors back and forth, and then she moves the balls from one side to the other. I help her as much as I can and grab a little yarn chomp when the opportunity presents itself. Why does the Mother of Cats get so emotional about my help? I think that it means that she loves me, don’t you? But if she loves me, why does she keep cutting my claws short? I don’t understand why she doesn’t trust me more…

This is what our work looks like now. Pretty good, don’t you think?

There is no way that the Mother of Cats could have done such a good job without my help.

I’m such a good boy.

Can I have some cookies now?

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I’m still not sure if the issue with the edge of the cable was me or the pattern, but I have to say that I just love, love, love how this sweater is working up. I put my notes on the change I made to the shaping increases in my project notes in case you are interested.
I did take a picture of the whole sweater the way it looks right now.

I am using a different dye lot of the light grey yarn at the bottom of the sweater; it is a little darker. I made the switch when I started the colorwork and plan to finish up the bottom ribbing with the darker color. I’m saving the lighter yarn to do the V-neck ribbing, which I will do next, and then to start the sleeves until I get them down to the colorwork that will allow me to switch to the darker grey.
The Estes Park Wool Market is in two weeks and I have hopes that this sweater will be done in time to wear there (and that it will be cold enough in early June for a sweater…). I’m on a deadline, people! Must knit faster!!

MacKenzie Speaks: The Sturgill Sweater is Done.

Hi. I’m MacKenzie.

Ornry cat snoozing on beautiful Fair Isle knitting. — I’ve been napping on the new sweater as much as possible.

The Mother of Cats has continued to knit like crazy on her new sweater. I’ve been giving her tons of help, but she doesn’t seem to appreciate me the way she should. She continues to freak out every single time that I put a claw on her sweater; she always grabs my paw and WON’T LET ME TOUCH THE SWEATER WITH MY PAWS!! I do not understand why she is acting this way. So selfish, the Mother of Cats!

Trimmed claws on the ornry cat that make him knitting friendly. — Look at what she did to me!!

The Mother of Cats is so unstable and difficult to work with. After I snagged her knitting only a couple of times she grabbed me and CUT MY NAILS!!! Can you see the damage in the picture?

Ornry cat snoozing on knitting with his paws on the work. — After my nails were cut she started letting me sleep on her knitting. Ah. So much better. This sweater is so, so comfy.

Finished sweater on the Mother of Cats. — Tonight she finished the sweater and put it on. NOOO!!! What will I sleep on now?

The Mother of Cats pulled out a lot of yarn this evening and started knitting on new projects, lots of new projects, lots of new yarns. She let me help and I got to chomp at least three different colors. One has cashmere… my favorite!! Wait until I get to show that yarn off.

I’m such a good boy.

Can I have some cookies now?

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The sweater is Sturgill by Caitlin Hunter. My project notes on Ravelry are here.
I finished the sleeves before completing the body as I was worried about running out of yarn and was considering options. I completed only a couple of inches of sleeve ribbing and paced the stitches on holders so I could match to the body of the sweater later (see below).
The sweater is knit with DK weight yarn, but I ran out of the main color (dark grey) before I finished the body of the sweater. I had a skein of fingering in the same colorway (Man in Black by Stitch Together) so I blended that yarn held doubled with the DK by alternating rows for several rounds and then completed the body with the doubled fingering. It was a great match.

Details of yarn in the sleeve ribbing. — Here is a close-up of the ribbing showing the doubled fingering mixed with the DK weight yarn. Don’t those colors look good?! All the ribbing on the body and most of the sleeve ribbing was done with the doubled fingering yarn.

Once the body of the sweater was completed I did the same blending trick with the sleeve ribbing and then added another 4″ to the sleeve ribbing to get a total of 6″ ribbing. Sleeves fit perfect!
After wet blocking the two weights of yarn look identical in the sweater. Win!
MacKenzie has already gotten over the cutting of his claws since it allowed him to plant himself constantly on my knitting…

Spoiled and ornry cat sleeping on sweater. — As far as MacKenzie is concerned the new sweater is a bed for him…

Now that I’m done with all of my current WIPs it is time to go crazy and cast on lots of new projects. Wait until I can show off the next wave of knitted yumminess.